The present invention relates generally to seat covers, and more particularly to an improved, two-stage seat cover which transitions from a one-piece system for accommodating a rear-facing child safety chair to a two-piece system for accommodating a forward-facing one to prevent a seat from being soiled and permanently compressed thereby.
Child safety chairs have been marketed throughout the world for many years. It is now mandatory within the United States for parents to employ child safety chairs when traveling in vehicles so that their children are safe in case an unfortunate event such as a car accident should occur.
Child safety chairs on seats are typically positioned in two directions depending upon the age and/or weight of the child using it. The safety chair is typically placed to face toward the vehicle's rear when it is used upon a small infant generally up to six months of age. As the infant matures in age and weight (i.e., six months up to eight years or eighty pounds in weight), the child safety chair is usually turned around so that it faces toward the front of the vehicle.
Existing safety restraints such as lap and shoulder belts are typically utilized to harness the child safety chairs to the vehicular seats. However, a significant problem exists in that the weight of these chairs are continuously applied upon the vehicular seats, thereby often causing permanent compression damages thereto. The degree of permanent compression damage can drastically increase given the fact that the weight of infant or child has to be accounted for in addition to the safety chair's weight. Most parents have found such damage to be simply unacceptable as they permanently deforms the seats of their vehicles.
Further marring to the vehicular seats can occur when infants or children using the child safety chairs inadvertently soil the seats, for example, by diaper leaks on accidental spilling of their drinks and/or food.
To alleviate these problems, many parents resort to using seat coverings such as plastic sheets, rubber mats and foam padded blankets between the vehicular seats and the child safety chairs. Though these seat coverings generally achieve their primary objective of protecting vehicular seats, they possess certain deficiencies which detract for their overall utility.
Perhaps the greatest deficiency of such coverings is their inability to protect the entirety of the vehicular seats. Specifically, plastic sheets, rubber mats and padded blankets are essentially tailored to cover only the seating portions of the vehicular seats and may be useful when accommodating a rearward-facing safety chair as it distributes weight solely on the seating portion of the vehicular seat. However, when the chair is repositioned to be forward-facing, these coverings typically cannot prevent the chair from further contacting the exposed seat-back portion of the vehicular seat thereby inevitably dispersing its weight thereto. Although multiple layers of plastic sheets, rubber mats or padded blankets may theoretically be spread over the seats, such arrangement will be aesthetically unpleasing, not to mention being awkward and difficult to maintain as they are not designed for such use.
In view of the above-described shortcomings of conventional vehicular seat coverings, there exists a need in the art for a vehicular seat cover that can optimally accommodate both rearward and forward facing child safety chairs, the directions of which are critical at various stages of a child's growth. More specifically, there exists a need for a vehicular seat cover which can prevent vehicular seats from becoming soiled and permanently compressed irrespective of the orientations that the child safety chairs take.